Hadfield likes his long stay in space

OTTAWA — Space travel has changed since his first two flights, says Chris Hadfield. Before, he visited briefly. Now he’s living there.

“After 20 years of being an astronaut, I had only been in space for 20 days,” he said in a press conference from orbit. He always had the feeling the experience was “rushed.”

He had spent a further 20 days in space by Wednesday of this week, and has more than four months to go.

Long-term space flight makes it possible “to have a measured, thoughtful existence, to really absorb what it’s like. That’s different this time. The richness of that, the impact on me personally and hopefully on my ability to capture it and describe it to people for the rest of my life, is much, much deeper.”

“It’s amazing what’s possible” with communications technology. He has 160,000 Twitter followers; he can watch his favourite Leafs game while he’s on the station treadmill; and he can send video of his work to Earth.

“What we’re doing on space station is fundamentally fascinating, and I think it shows through a measure like Twitter,” especially with his photos of the Earth, he said.

One of his photos showed Syria, and he noted on Twitter that the country looks peaceful from orbit. A 90-minute orbit goes around the entire planet and reinforces the idea that the world “is one place,” he said. “The perspective (from space) is something that would benefit everyone.”

His favourite photo showed noctilucent clouds — literally, clouds that shine at night. They are ice particles high in Earth’s atmosphere that can rarely be seen from the ground.

But from orbit they show at dusk and dawn as the sun lights them from underneath. “To me that’s both beautiful because of the colours and textures and ripples of it, but also really significant. It’s a way to understand changes in our atmosphere and to understand exactly how our atmosphere interacts with the universe beyond.

“We are so lucky to be the ones holding the cameras.”

“There are still lots of surprises,” he said. He’s a bit clumsy on Earth when he wakes up in the morning and learned he is the same way in space when he floats out of his sleeping berth: “I bump into things. Even though I’m weightless you can still have the morning clumsies up here.”

Kevin Ford, the station’s commander, declared Thursday Canada Appreciation Day. The crew was working with two Canadian astronauts in Mission Control, Jeremy Hansen and David St-Jacques, and was training with the Canadarm2.